


you come beating like moth's wings

by fallfreely



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fill, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallfreely/pseuds/fallfreely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry’s already moving to the entertainment center, popping the first dvd into the player. “I might have made a few tweets about it. Our fans are lovely people. I’m thinking about taking up bird-watching, you know.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	you come beating like moth's wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andwhatyousaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andwhatyousaid/gifts).



> This fic is a fill for a prompt over at the new [lirry ficathon](http://liam-harry.livejournal.com/3256.html). Just getting started! So please come joinnnnnnnnn. :)
> 
> Oh, also, here's a helpful [visual aid](http://i.imgur.com/SGYmaDC.jpg).

The morning after their last gig in Sydney, Liam wakes up with a hangover the size of France and a new tattoo that’s almost equally as massive.

The tattoo he doesn’t even notice until he’s managed to crawl off the floor in the hotel loo, finally finished emptying his guts into the toilet, and as he’s slurping water out of the tap he catches his first glimpse of it in the mirror. There’s a curl of black ink over the tops of his shoulders, the sharp fresh lines spilling down to his biceps, and Liam quickly straightens up, turning away from the mirror and craning his neck backwards to see.

His head spins and his stomach churns as he takes in the scope of it: there’s a pair of wings suddenly tattooed on his back, starting from the point between his shoulder blades, feathers dripping down nearly to his hips, almost every inch of skin in between filled with feather details and shading. The wings are even stretched out across his shoulders and the backs of Liam’s arms, the tips of the leading feathers grazing all the way against his elbows. It’s one of the most amazing tattoos Liam’s ever seen, literally breathtaking, and he has no idea why the fuck it’s on him.

“Harry. Haz, Hazza,” Liam says, stumbling back into the room, over to the second bed where Harry’s still sprawled on his stomach, just in his pants on top of the sheets, either passed out or asleep. The soft closed set of his mouth against the pillow makes it seem like the latter, so Liam doesn’t feel so bad about getting a knee up on Harry’s mattress, putting a hand on Harry’s bare shoulder to shake him awake.

“What, Liam,” Harry says, voice slurring, eyes still closed and his mouth twisting itself into a vexed little frown.

“Did we go and get tattoos last night?” Liam asks, because he doesn’t remember anything that he feels he should, and it’s more than a bit upsetting—he remembers drinking enough at the club that his limbs had felt loose with it, and dancing with beach-blonde girls that laughed and taught them slang like ‘sheila’ and ‘rager’, and making plans with the lads to get a yacht for the next few days, to smoke up and swim and jet-ski in the harbor. Liam had wanted very specifically to go snorkeling on the reef and look for fish like the ones in the Finding Nemo movie; see, he remembers all that, but not declaring any intentions to get a tattoo that’s surely gonna cause his mum to have a heart attack when she finds out.

“What?” Harry says, finally squinting his eyes open, and Liam repeats himself.

“Did we go to a tattoo shop, after the club? Did we ask an artist to come back here? Did we do something like that?”

Harry levers himself up on an elbow, yawning. He rubs at his face, then pushes his tangled hair out of it, peering up at Liam. “What’re you on about?” he asks, finally, words coming out confused and molasses-slow.

Liam is too impatient to explain, and anyway he doesn’t even know how—instead he turns around, sitting on the edge of Harry’s bed so that his back is in full view.

Harry makes a sound, something like surprise or appreciation, and even though Liam should probably have expected it, the brush of Harry’s fingertips along Liam’s spine is enough to make him startle, turn his head to see.

Harry’s looking at Liam’s back like he’s in awe, still half-asleep, eyelashes dark and heavy over the green of his eyes, and Harry’s normally so hard to phase that Liam feels strangely proud—just for a second, before he remembers he’s supposed to be worried about the big black hole gaping in his memories.

“That’s sick, mate,” Harry says, impressed. “When’d you get it done?”

“That’s what I’m asking you,” Liam says, exasperated, rotating so that he’s sitting cross-legged on the mattress now, the nylon of his trackies making a hissing noise against the sheets as Harry’s hand falls away from Liam’s back. Harry rubs at his face again, obviously trying to wake up more. Liam’s head is still pounding, an ache that’s gone more distant but still a present throb at his temples, threatening as he strains himself to think too hard to lay him out on the floor again.

Harry’s slumped back down to his pillow now, arm tucked behind his head, blinking at Liam as he tries to process the question. “Did we go get tattoos?” he repeats, slow, like he’s testing the words out in the broad shape of his mouth, on his tongue, seeing if they’re familiar. “Nah, we came straight back here, wasn’t it? The others left earlier, right, with Paul. And we stayed a bit longer and came back in a taxi. That’s what I remember.”

Liam chews on his lip, even more confused than before—because that’s exactly how he remembers it, too: messing around with Harry at the club, everything like a game, like they were trying to out-annoy each other the whole night, the other lads shaking their heads at them in disgust as they left Liam and Harry on their own. Then there’d been a bit of drunken stumbling around on the pavements, arms hooked around each other’s waists and holding each other up, making weird faces at the paps before trying to shove each other in the taxi first, ending up half-collapsed together on the bench seat because of it.

Liam remembers Harry scrubbing Liam’s eyebrows backwards as they walked through the lobby, and Liam pulling Harry’s bandana off in retaliation, making Harry chase him for it all the way to their room, then falling through the door grappling with each other, hands and arms clumsy with alcohol, dizzy and laughing in each other’s faces. Liam remembers saying Harry smelled like whiskey and perfume, inches from his mouth; he remembers them pulling unhelpfully at each other’s clothes to get undressed for bed. 

Everything’s a bit blurry, sure—hazy and a bit embarrassing in the sober light of day, but Liam feels like he’s remembering all of it well enough. Even the part where they’d tried to brush each other’s teeth and ended up a mutual mess of foam and paste, yelping and smacking each other with wet flannels. They’d both fallen into their beds not long after that. Liam’s last memory from last night is of rolling over and looking at Harry in the dark, his body like a landscape in the other bed, a view from a window: his broad shoulders, the narrower curve of his waist like distant mountains falling into a valley. Liam’s pretty sure he fell asleep like that, listening to the slow sound of Harry’s breathing, the hum of it in Liam’s ears steadier than the wispy buzz of the air conditioning.

So where does a tattoo fit into the evening—especially one that surely must have been bloody painful, and taken hours and hours to do properly with the size of it, and all the detail—there’s no way Liam wouldn’t remember having something like this etched into his skin, so the question remains: why doesn’t he?

“Did you go early this morning?” Harry asks, but skeptically, like he already knows that’s impossible, which it completely is.

“No, I just woke up, I haven’t left the room,” Liam says, nails scratching anxiously over the   
stubble on his cheeks. “I swear, Hazza, unless I’ve gone like, totally mental, or I went sleepwalking, I think it kind of— just, like— appeared or something.” 

Harry blinks a few times, absorbing this. “Hmm,” he says, after a pregnant pause.

“I’m not crazy, right? Tell me I haven’t lost it, please.” Liam says, a bit desperately.

“Turn around, let me see it again,” Harry says, and Liam does so, this time by groaning and throwing himself face-first onto the mattress, the closest he can get right now to hiding away from the world and making all of this nonsense stop.

Harry’s bare legs and feet shift away from Liam’s head, drawing up, and the mattress dents like Harry’s kneeling at Liam’s side, hovering over him. Liam’s stomach coils in a weird way, but not like he’s sick: like he’s anticipating, and that’s— different. When a spit-wet finger starts scrubbing into Liam’s bicep, he yelps, because once again he wasn’t expecting what he should have been.

“What the hell, Haz?” Liam complains, trying to look backwards, but the angle’s bad with the way he’s laying down, and he can only catch the side of Harry’s face, curls falling into his eyes and mouth set in concentration.

“Just checking that it’s not marker or something, like a prank,” Harry says—and oh. Liam would have thought of that too, probably. Eventually. If he weren’t so hungover.

“Oh,” Liam says, then turns his face into the mattress again, burying it. His voice comes out muffled. “Is it?”

“Seems real enough,” Harry answers, dashing that tiny flicker of hope before it even has a proper chance to bloom.

Harry’s weight shifts again, and next thing Liam feels isn’t Harry’s fingers, or the palm of his hand, but the unmistakable press of his mouth, opening warm and damp on the back of Liam’s shoulder, lips dragging like it’s a kiss for a second until his tongue flicks out, licking a wet stripe on Liam’s skin.

The rush of heat to Liam’s belly is tight and instinctive and immediate, like Harry’s tongue has pressed a button, but Liam ignores it, rolling on his side to glare up at him.

“I—that—” Liam sputters, mouth moving but not forming words for a second, until he’s recovered enough to say, “was that really necessary?”

Harry shrugs. “Just making sure.” Maybe Liam’s imagining things—maybe bloody all of this is a hallucination—but a smile seems to curl into the corner of Harry’s mouth for an instant, dimple flashing before he’s back to looking just sleepy and curious, like the version of himself Liam’s always known best.

“By tasting me?” Liam says, hastily correcting himself, “tasting it, the thing.”

“Doesn’t taste like a fresh tat,” Harry says, like that’s an answer— like he’s a connoisseur, or whatever they call those people who get snooty and posh about wines.

“Number one, I’m never gonna ask you how you know that,” Liam says, frowning, “Number two, are you saying, like— it tastes old? Or—”

Harry rubs his mouth, thumb dragging thoughtfully against his bottom lip. “I dunno, it wasn’t just like normal skin, though.” He leans closer, then, peering down at Liam’s back. “Hang on, there’s something, let me—” and he reaches out, fingers plucking at Liam’s shoulder, right on the wet spot where he’d licked.

Liam gasps, because there’s a sharp sting, and he’s opening his mouth to tell Harry off except then there’s the weirdest _tugging_ sensation, like it’s under the surface, and then the spot flashes red-hot with brief pain, and as Liam’s hissing Harry’s already pulling back, making a face at the thing he’s got pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

Liam goes cold all over, looking at it—he doesn’t even know what his own face must be doing, he’s got no idea what he’s even feeling, but the ache of his head is winding up to a rhythmic throbbing tempo, making him dizzy and sick.

“Huh,” Harry says, clearly at a loss. “That’s pretty weird,” which— understatement of the century, because he’s holding a feather, isn’t he? An honest-to-god fucking _feather_ , an otherwise innocent-looking fluffy white one, and he’d pulled it out of Liam’s _skin_ , Liam had _felt it come out_.

His arms feel weak, suddenly, and shaky, but Liam props himself on an elbow, reaching out to take the feather from Harry, and as soon as he touches it, it’s like he just knows—this is definitely not a prank, or a hallucination, or a dream—this thing was in him, was part of him, it belonged. 

And Liam knows, down in his bones, that there’s more where it came from. Loads more.

* 

The flight from Tullamarine airport to Heathrow International isn’t the longest Liam’s ever travelled in his life, but by the time the plane touches its wheels down in England, twenty-eight hours after they’d lifted off from Australia, Liam is more than ready to swear off aeroplanes for the rest of his natural life.

Anyway, it’s not that he hates flying. But when you’ve got actual, real wings, it does make it a bit difficult to sit patiently in a giant moving machine for over a day and let yourself be ferried halfway across the world. Not that he can go flying around in the sky under his own power, at least not right now. They haven’t exactly broken the news to their millions of fans that Liam might, technically, be part angel. 

Liam’s still coping with the reality of it himself, truth be told. After that first crazy week—when Harry had come to Liam’s rescue, alternately swaddling Liam in oversized hoodies and hiding him away in the hotel room, covering for him with everyone while Liam’s wings had emerged from the tattooed skin of his back by painful, agonizing inches, until he’d won the fight with himself over letting it happen, gotten that rush of ecstatic joy and relief the first time he’d stood with them spread fully out, the tips of his primaries nearly brushing against the walls, Harry whooping as Liam beat his wings against the air with huge rushing sounds, blowing the sheets off the beds and the lamps off the tables—since then, Liam’s not had his wings out much. Once he’d realized he could fold his wings away—he doesn’t know what else to call it, but he can sort of flex his mind more than his muscles in a certain way, and they disappear back into the tattoo— he hasn’t really had much chance or opportunity to let them out. 

Well, Harry had asked to see them, a few different nights, fingers tugging in his curls like he was shy about the request, or something; other than that, though, Liam’s had to keep them in. It’s like keeping a hand clenched in a fist all of the time, almost—doesn’t quite feel right, or natural—and Liam’s kept tight rein on himself, like being wrapped in clingfilm to keep from feeling too much, to keep from reacting too strongly to anything. Every rush of emotion he’s had since getting his wings has been like a promise or a threat, the waves of happiness or anger echoing like thunderclaps in his ears, making him turn on his heels and leave whatever room he’s in—even on the stage sometimes, even mid-song, and god hadn’t that always been a nightmare to explain—and Liam always ending up gritting his teeth in a janitor’s closet somewhere, or the loo, doing breathing exercises until he doesn’t feel the stitching on all his seams fraying apart, until the buzzing of his wings so close to the surface and ready to come bursting out subsides.

The call to Liam’s mum that Harry had insisted upon had provided at least a bit of explanation, though not a thorough one—it had been hard to understand her sometimes through all the incoherent crying: something to do with Liam’s illness as a child, and praying, and miracles—Liam intends to get the full story from her once he gets home. Anyway, he knows the wings weren’t entirely unexpected on his parents’ part, but the chance of ‘manifestation’, as she’d called it, had been so vanishingly small that they’d never wanted to worry Liam with it.

He can’t help but be frustrated with that reasoning: now, obviously, he does have to worry about it, on a very grand scale, and it’s not just Liam’s life and livelihood that will be affected by this, but four other lads as well, along with their band, and the staff, and pretty much everyone at the label. Really though, Liam can’t think for too long without getting ill about the list of careers that might be tanked if the secret of him being a feathery sideshow circus freak comes out badly, in the wrong way. He’s been in the business long enough to understand the way massive secrets like this can’t stay secrets forever. He understands the need for spin. 

But he’s just come off a truly hellish last three weeks of tour, on top of an already mentally and physically exhausting eight months of tour, and he doesn’t particularly want to face any of that now, not just yet. 

Which is why when Liam leaves Heathrow beaten down with jetlag, dodging the crowds of fans and paparazzi, the loudness of the screams too shrill in his ears after the long silence of the plane cabin, it’s not to go dust off his London flat, or even to go home to Wolverhampton. Instead, Liam pitches his bags into the back of Harry’s hulking black Range Rover, along with Harry’s own gear, and the two of them just get in the car and drive.

*

Liam had known about Harry owning a small little estate in the middle of nowhere, Cheshire East farmlands, but he’s never actually visited there before; likely neither has Harry, really, aside from once or twice, given the way he fumbles around for the light switches in every room they pass through. The place smells a bit like fresh paint still, like it’s never properly aired out, though it has to have been at least a year since Harry’s bought the deed for it.

Liam crashes on the first guest bed that Harry shows him, even though it’s only about two in the afternoon, local time—that’s the beauty of international travel, fucks up internal clocks like none other—and when he wakes about fourteen hours later, rolling over and groaning at the stiffness in his muscles, mouth feeling like lint’s packed into it, it’s to a pre-dawn greyness creeping up into the pieces of the sky that Liam can see through the window and the trees outside of it.

The first thing he does is shower, rinsing the caked-on sweat and travel dust off his skin, scrubbing till he feels like eight months worth of it is coming off him. After that, Liam throws on the cleanest-smelling pair of pants and trackies he can find in his duffel and wanders out to the kitchen. He makes tea with just sugar, no milk to be had before they can manage a grocery run, and leaves a second mug of it for Harry on the counter, though it’s probably wishful thinking to imagine Harry’ll be up anytime before the sun is.

He steps out onto the back porch with his tea, sipping it and shivering a bit. The chill of November is already in the air, but after the sweltering heat of Australia it’s almost like a relief. He’s spent the last three weeks always in long-sleeves or hoodies, even when he’s backstage, even in the bus or the hotels. The other lads, and their managers, and even some of the friendlier staff had all asked Liam about it, but the flu story Harry had cooked up had gone a long way in keeping their questions at bay, excusing most of Liam’s abnormal clothes and behavior.

Liam’s asked himself a dozen times over why he hasn’t told at least Niall, Zayn, and Louis about all this wing business, since Harry already knows, but Liam’s no closer to an answer on that then he is to knowing why this had to happen to him first place—and why now, especially, when he’s just turned twenty, barely starting to come to grips with the idea of being an adult human, let alone anything else.

The sky is just tingeing over to light silver when the glass door slips open behind Liam, and Harry comes outside kitted out a lot more appropriately than Liam is: flannel pajama pants, socks, a hoodie so old and worn it’s gone from burgundy-colored to pink. 

Even with all that, Harry’s still shivering by the time he gets to where Liam’s standing at the edge of the steps, voice rough with too much sleep when he says, “Are you trying to catch your death? S’freezing out here.”

“I’m alright,” Liam says, realizing as he does that his teeth are chattering. Harry makes an exasperated sound and reaches out for him, hooking an arm around Liam’s bare waist and drawing him in close, the heat from Harry’s fingers feeling like brands against the chill of Liam’s skin.

“You’re not alright,” Harry grouses, still groggy and kind of out of it, if his voice and the squint of his eyes is anything to judge by. “You’re gonna get pneumonia and die, and the neighbors’ll think I killed you and buried you in the backyard or something.”

Liam peers through the early morning fog, at the thick stands of trees lining the property, about an acre distant from the porch they’re standing on now. “Do you even have neighbors?”

“I might, there could be,” Harry says, petulant, tucking his head onto Liam’s shoulder and sounding sleepier than before. He’ll probably start to doze back off in half a minute if Liam lets him. Liam huffs, because on the days where Harry’s not sailing around wrapped up in a shroud of mystery, he’s just about as predictable as the alphabet. 

Even exasperated, though, Liam can’t keep from curling his own arm around Harry’s back, tucking him in against Liam’s side. He always feels a bit fond and weird about it whenever he does that, lately: it’s only that it wasn’t so very long ago that it was much easier to fit him in, before Harry turned into such a truck-sized beanpole. There’ve been times, lately, when Liam’s had to look twice at Harry, or three times, just to make sure he’s seeing him right.

It does feel colder now, somehow, like Liam hadn’t noticed it as much until Harry’d pointed it out, but Liam doesn’t want to go back inside yet—he’s been cooped up for the better part of a month.

The quiet stillness in the air and the vastness of the empty space around them is giving Liam an idea, if he dares it—except it seems it’s been so long that he hardly even has to think about unfurling his wings before they’re out, stretching up and behind him like fingers spreading out from a cramped fist, the sheer blissful relief of it making Liam exhale like a sigh. He flaps them lightly, the two-foot quills of his primaries scraping against the deck furniture before he adjusts, shifting. He still has to concentrate to move his wings where he wants them to go: the muscle control is both instinctive and not, his movements too broad and clumsy if he’s not paying proper attention to what he’s doing. It’s just that he hasn’t had enough practice with them—too afraid of someone besides Harry popping unexpectedly into the room, even when Harry’s promised to guard the door—and if Liam’s honest, that’s half the reason he’d agreed when Harry had invited him to come stay here, green eyes hazy and sympathetic as he’d promised Liam wide open skies, wide open spaces. 

Liam wants to learn how to fly.

For now, though, he settles his wings, draping them around himself and Harry like a fleecy white blanket. The insulation warms him up right away, and Liam feels pleased, glad to have found the first actual thing these things can be good for, a way that they’re useful rather than just massively scary and inconvenient.

But Harry’s gone stiff against Liam’s side, like he’s frozen, and Liam’s pleased feeling subsides into worry, thinking that he’s overstepped himself, crossed some line with Harry that Liam would have sworn just a second ago didn’t even exist.

He starts to lift his wings back up, gingerly, but Harry’s voice comes out low and urgent, stopping him. “No, don’t.”

“Sorry—” Liam says, holding still. “Is this okay? I didn’t ask.”

Instead of saying it’s fine, Harry lifts his free hand, fingers trailing carefully over the edge of the wing Liam’s got half-curled around him. “They’re really soft,” Harry says, and his voice is doing something strange with the words, so that he sounds almost wondering, saying ‘soft’ like the word itself is cottony-fine, like if Liam licked into Harry’s mouth he’d be able to taste the sugarfloss sweetness of it. 

Harry’s relaxed back into Liam by now, and Liam takes that as permission to resettle his wings like they were before, snug and secure. He tries to stop thinking about Harry’s mouth, but it’s always been a bit of a distraction for him.

“Are you surprised?” Liam asks, amused.

“No,” Harry starts to say, then laughs, just a light cough of air. “Yeah, actually, though I don’t know why. S’pose they just looked all smooth from far back.” His fingers are still playing through Liam’s feathers, tracing down the stiff vanes of his primaries, then moving up to pet over the softer coverts. Harry’d been the one to teach Liam the different words for all the feather types, actually, sitting on the hotel bed with him that first week, heads bent close and Harry’s tablet shared over both their laps.

For someone so clumsy and spaced-out, normally, he’s been like an anchor for Liam through all this, keeping him from going completely mental or falling into hysterics every five minutes, steady and unphased even through the worst bits—even when Liam had been face-down on the mattress and sweating through the pain of getting his wings out for the first time, Harry had been there to squeeze his hand, murmur vague encouragements. Maybe it was purely coincidence that they’d been paired up in a room when the tattoo had shown up on Liam’s back, but after everything that’s happened, Liam can’t actually imagine going through it with anyone else.

Liam tilts his cheek against the top of Harry’s head, his sleep-wild curls tickling Liam’s chin and throat but he doesn’t mind, humming under his breath as he watches the sky lighten over the field behind Harry’s house, the mist lifting off the grass, leaving it soaked wet with dew.

“Can’t you feel this at all?” Harry asks curiously, fingers curling through the shorter, tight-knit feathers near the top of Liam’s wing, then pulling out slowly, like he’s combing them. Liam shivers, and it has nothing at all to do with the late autumn frost in the air.

“Yeah, ‘course I can,” he says, words gluey in his throat. He takes a swig of his neglected tea to cover it, wincing at how cold it’s gotten. They stand in silence for a while longer, then Harry asks:

“Going to do the thing today, Liam?”

Liam grins. “Gonna try.”

“We better get some food in you then. Can’t fly away on an empty stomach,” Harry says, sounding strange again, this time like he’s forcing the cheer into his voice, but Liam doesn’t have time to puzzle over it before Harry’s ducking out from under Liam’s wing, aiming a slap to his bum as he moves back inside. 

Liam turns to look after him, but gets caught by his reflection in the glass doors, struck like always by the gut-swooping weirdness of seeing himself with his wings out: the snow white of them pale against the tan of his skin, the size of them always startling, swallowing up all the space around him, making Liam feel larger than he really is. He always feels like he’s looking at a stranger; he feels like something bigger than the sky itself.

Tearing his eyes away, Liam takes a breath, folds his wings in, and follows Harry into the warmth of the house.

*

There turns out to be nothing in the cupboards besides the one box of tea Liam had found and some stale, ancient Weetabix, so they end up having to pack into Harry’s car and drive for nearly half an hour to find a grocer that’s open this early in the day. There’s an old man sweeping out the front of his store that lets them in when Harry turns a smile on him--the one with the eyes, the one that can get just about anyone to do anything for him, even Paul’s not immune to it.

Harry ends up using the same eyes on Liam once they’re back at the house, softening Liam up with eggy bread and bacon first before diving into his suitcases and pulling out a handful of dvd boxsets, all of them looking like extremely long and boring nature documentaries about birds, one of them even aptly titled: _The Mastery of Flight_.

“They’ll help you,” Harry insists.

“I’ll fall asleep,” Liam groans. “Where did you even get these?”

Harry’s already moving to the entertainment center, popping the first dvd into the player. “I might have made a few tweets about it. Our fans are lovely people. I’m thinking about taking up bird-watching, you know. ”

“And I’m thinking about strangling you with your stupid bandana in your sleep,” Liam says, grimly, but he moves to sit on the couch, pulling his t-shirt off and tossing it on the carpet as he goes. Now that he doesn’t have to, he finds wearing anything over his back feels stifling, like a tie knotted too tight around his neck. Anyway, Harry hardly wears clothes himself, so why should Liam bother. 

Harry turns back around and sees him, but doesn’t make any other comment besides, “Slob,” as he stoops and picks up Liam’s discarded top. Liam feels guilty for a second, remembering that he’s a guest here, this isn’t communal property like the tourbus, but then Harry comes and sprawls all along Liam’s side, even though the couch is huge and there’s a whole other chair besides, so Liam figures he’s probably not too stroppy about it.

Liam manages four marathon hours of documentary-watching before his eyelids start drooping down on him, his body sagging sideways on the cushions with his mobile screen blurring in front of his face—he’d meant to tweet something about David Attenborough being a gangster, but he’s sure he hasn’t spelled it right—and the next thing he knows is his mobile’s buzzing and ringing in his hand, waking him up out of his doze, and Harry’s grumbling sleepily with his face pressed into the groove between Liam’s shoulder blades.

Liam sits up, untangling them both—Harry’d somehow managed to wedge his massive overgrown self in between Liam and the back of the couch, more of a miracle feat than Liam’s wings, maybe—and when he looks properly at his still-ringing phone he groans, stabbed with the knife-pain guilt of a neglectful son.

“Hey, mum,” Liam says, answering it, scrubbing his hand over his face.

Somewhere in the middle of a conversation that’s mostly Liam’s trying to soothe his crying mum, like most of them have been for the past three years, and especially the last three weeks, he becomes aware that Harry’s woken up, too, his body going from sleep-lax to subtly curling around Liam, anchoring him like a parenthesis.

Liam tells his mum something about making it home as soon as he can, saying he just needs a bit more time to sort things out, and Harry’s hand comes up warm against the small of Liam’s back, rubbing in comforting circles, the pads of his fingers tripping lightly over the shallow ridges of Liam’s spine.

Liam takes a breath, something uncoiling in his stomach that’s not entirely unlike the feeling he gets from uncoiling his wings, and it occurs to him—or at least, he can finally admit to himself—that some of the things that need sorting out aren’t entirely to do with his new feathery appendages.

“I’ll go get some dinner on,” Harry says, low, just for Liam to hear, and Liam shoots him a grateful look as Harry gets up from the couch, one of his hands big and warm on Liam’s shoulder for balance.

*

By the Liam manages to gently ring off with his still-sobbing mum, the whole house has a lovely smell of roasted garlic, and Liam makes his way into the kitchen. He finds Harry there with some kind of ridiculous Green Bay Packers apron on over his ripped jeans and holey t-shirt, and he’s pulling a lasagna out of the oven wearing oven-mitts shaped like cats. Everything’s a gift from fans, obviously, he hasn’t bought any of it for himself—but Harry always keeps everything, can’t ever bring himself to throw anything useful away, no matter how lame or worn it is, and it’s one of the things that makes Liam hopelessly fond about Harry no matter how hard he tries to repress it.

“Your mum alright?” Harry asks, turning around, stripping off the mitts. “She wants you home, huh?” There’s something careful in his face, the tiniest bit walled-off. Liam doesn’t like it.

“She does,” Liam agrees, settling his hip against the counter. “But she’s waited eight months to get me properly home,” he says, and he smiles to soften what he’s saying, “I reckon she’ll make it a few more days without me.”

“Me too,” Harry says, turning back to his lasagna—nothing fancy, just the frozen kind, but it smells amazing anyway—cutting out two portions and dishing them up onto plates. “I do that, too,” he says, words spooling out slowly, a rough scratch from deep in his chest. He hardly sounds like the nineteen year-old Liam knows him to be anymore; he hasn’t for a while now.

“You do what?”

“Think of Holmes Chapel as my proper home,” Harry says, handing over one of the plates. “Even though I’ve got this place, and my flat in London. So like, same as you.”

“It’s hard to do even that sometimes,” Liam says, feeling his mouth quirk up at the corner, a wry smile. “Sometimes the tourbus felt more like home than anywhere else, right? It’s weird to be away from it, and the other boys.” 

“Yeah,” Harry says, and then it’s sitting there again, on the tip of Liam’s tongue, but he still doesn’t say it: _I’m so glad you’re here, Haz. I’d be bloody lost without you here._ It’s the thank you he knows he owes Harry, big time, but it’s been three weeks and Liam hasn’t told him that. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like enough, maybe. Like there are still more words that Liam’s leaving out.

So Liam bites the inside of his cheek, saying nothing, and the two of them eat in companionable quiet for a while, stood leaning up against the counters in favor of sitting at the fancy dark-wood dining set. Everything about it feels normal, grounded, nice. Like an island of calm in the eye of a storm. In spite of making his mum cry—that’s just something sons do, he supposes—Liam thinks coming away before going anywhere else was a really good idea.

Like talking about the others had summoned them, Liam’s mobile buzzes with a text as he’s scraping the last of the lasagna into his mouth, and it’s from Niall.

_hows the honeymoon, lovebirds?_

Liam frowns over the text for a moment, wondering why it doesn’t feel more like a joke if it is one, then passes his phone over to Harry, showing him. Harry seems surprisingly unsurprised by it.

“Haz. What do you know that I don’t?” Liam asks, warily. 

Harry licks a piece of food out of his teeth, and just as Liam’s thinking he’s stalling, Harry says, “Yeah, back in Australia, they might have started asking me if I was hiding you away and like, covering you up for other reasons.”

Liam gapes. It’s not difficult to jump to conclusions after that. “You mean, like, _sex reasons?_ And you, what—just let them think that?”

“Yeah, of course,” Harry says, delivered casually, with a little lilted shrug of his shoulder, everything about him telegraphing, _aren’t I a good mate?_

“They couldn’t just believe I was sick?”

Harry holds his fist to his mouth, coughing into it an exaggerated, mocking way, and then he puts on his New Yorker-Marcel accent to say, “Wow, I can’t believe this flu’s lasted three whole weeks, you guys. And I’m not even contagious, how about them apples?”

Liam laughs, he can’t help it, but he still aims a kick at Harry’s shin. “Hey, come on, my acting was better than that.”

“Sure it was, Leeroy,” Harry tells him, grinning around a mouthful of garlic bread.

Liam pouts. “Anyway, I’m sure as hell not spending my real honeymoon in the country, in the cold and rain and stuff. You at least should take me to like, Aruba, or somewhere nice.”

“Sure, babe, wherever you want.”

Now Liam’s got that one Beach Boys song stuck in his head, so he can’t not sing it, waggling his eyebrows at Harry as he does. “ _Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya to Bermuda, Bahama—_ ” He shimmies over to the sink as he sings, cutting himself off as he sets his plate down and sees the red-gold of the sunset streaming thick orange light through the window. The sky outside looks like it’s burning down, but in a glorious, inviting way. Liam wants to get up in it.

He turns back to Harry, already bouncing on his toes. “Yeah, I reckon I’m gonna try flying now.”

“Sure, babe,” Harry says, smiling, his dimple like a kiss that’s already perched in his cheek. “Whatever you want.”

*

The first few attempts are embarrassing failures: a lot of flapping and bluster that doesn’t amount to much more than Liam going red in the face and kicking up a bit of wind. Harry calls out helpful and not-so helpful commentary from the porch, where he’s sat on the wooden rail with his glass of wine from dinner, legs dangling and boots hooked charmingly at the ankles. One of his suggestions is for Liam to take a running start at it, like the flock of ducks they’d seen in the nature films.

It almost works—Liam’s jump and flaps gets him a few feet off the ground before he thumps back down, but his wings are already aching, and he’s thinking maybe he just doesn’t have the strength built up yet—they’re muscles that need workouts, he reckons, just like his pecs and biceps and all the other stuff Liam has a personal trainer for. Except he imagines wing-trainers are a bit harder to come by in human society.

“Liam, try the roof,” Harry calls across the field, gesturing with his wineglass, and Liam follows where he’s pointing, looks skeptically at the steeply slanted tile. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Liam yells back, shaking his head—and still, somehow, five minutes later, Liam finds himself up on the roof anyway, because Harry Styles is a person that exists in his life.

“Just like when you were a kid, right?” Harry says, looking up at Liam from the safety of the ground, grinning. “You probably tried to jump off the roof at least once, every stupid kid does. Reckoned you were Superman.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, spreading both his hands and his wings for balance, bare toes gripping to the sandpaper-roughness of the roofing tiles as best they can. “But when you’re little, you jump off believing you can actually fly, don’t you?”

“So try doing that,” Harry says, and it’s a good enough suggestion that Liam takes a deep breath, and backs a few steps away from the edge, gathering himself, legs bent and ready.

“Just go, Liam,” Harry shouts, and like it’s a match at a fuse Liam goes, launching every molecule of himself, springing off the edge of the roof with a shout and punching the air with broad, powerful strokes of his wings.

And just like that he’s got lift, he’s aloft—shaky like a fledgling on the first few meters, but he breathes deep and evens himself out. He’s flying faster than he was expecting to, the field blurring away in green underneath him, the trees at the yard line already coming up in front of him, a wall of branches and leaves. Liam panics a bit, and twists, mind flashing as he does to the slow-motion shots of the flying birds from those bloody nature films; he tries angling his wings the same way he remembers seeing and it works--he turns in a tight, fast arc through the air, fingers raking through the leaves of the tree he’d almost hit, and Liam barks with breathless laughter, exhilarated. 

He does a few more spins around the field, the cold wind whipping tears out of his eyes but Liam’s dizzy with the thrill of it, of really flying, his wings cutting cleanly through the air—there’s nothing comparable to this at all, in the whole world, except for being on stage in front of thousands of people, singing his heart out for them while they sing the song back, knowing every lyric word for word.

He’s getting tired already, his new muscles fatigued and not used to this much work, so when Liam gets close to the house he angles closer to the ground, realizing too late that he has no fucking clue how to land.

He tries to slow down, cupping the air and beating it backwards, but in the end he ends up crashing more than anything else, tucking his wings in and his arms around his head as he hits the ground hard and rolls with his momentum.

There’s a hand on his shoulders only a few moments later, Harry’s voice sounding tinny and distant in the ringing of Liam’s ears as Harry tries to turn Liam over, calling his name with worry.

Liam’s laughing in a winded way by the time he flops onto his back, aching in almost every limb and his wings flattened uncomfortably beneath him, but it’s not long before Liam’s clinging to Harry’s hands and using his help to drag his way to his feet, wavering unsteadily for a few seconds before the earth feels familiar and soild underneath Liam once again.

“Alright there?” Harry asks, probably not for the first time, but Liam just laughs again, high off the adrenaline that’s still rushing fast and hot through his bloodstream.

He grabs Harry’s forearms, spinning him in a quick impromptu jig, then Liam gets impatient with that--it’s not enough for the wild, reckless feeling inside him--and he moves his hands to the back of Harry’s head, fingers sinking deep into his curls as Liam draws them close until their foreheads are bumping together, until the smell of the wine on Harry’s breath is exhaling humid and sweet over Liam’s cheek. Harry’s grinning now, too, caught up in the rush Liam’s feeding out.

“Am I alright?” Liam laughs, nearly panting it. “I flew, Harry, did you see me? I was bloody flying!”

“I did, I saw you,” Harry says, and his hands are resting warm on the hot skin of Liam’s waist. It’s edging closer to night by now, the sun sinking lower beneath the trees, and the temperature must be dropping but Liam doesn’t feel it—he only feels this heated, bubbling happiness that wants to spread out like his wings, wants to be shared.

“You were watching, you really saw?” Liam repeats, giddily, like a little kid wanting affirmation.

“Yeah, mate,” Harry says, voice rumbling out, Liam can almost feel the vibration of it from where they’re pressed together. “You looked gorgeous up there.”

“Yeah?” 

“Absolutely amazing. Like a swan,” Harry says, the flash of his grin giving away his teasing.

“A swan?” Liam says, rearing back indignantly. “You couldn’t have said something, like, manlier? Like an eagle or something?”

“A pigeon?” Harry offers, scrunching his nose. “A goose?”

“Nevermind, just shut up,” Liam laughs, and the next thing he knows is his mouth is on Harry’s, he’s kissing Harry, the recklessness and the adrenaline moving him without thinking. Once he realizes what he’s doing Liam breaks it, feels his cheeks flaming with heat as he lets go of Harry’s face, stepping back. “Oh! I—sorry, that was—”

But Harry’s already stepping into the space Liam’s stepped out of, his eyes flashing with something like stubbornness, and then Liam finds he’s the one being clung to, being kissed. The surprise of it is enough that he gasps, mouth opening against Harry’s, and Harry makes a lower sound into it, tongue slipping cleverly past Liam’s lips, brushing Liam’s in a soft, inviting way, and it makes Liam gasp again, shivering from his toes to his wingtips.

Liam breaks away from the kiss, breathing heavily and feeling unbalanced, like the ground is shifting unfairly underneath his feet. “Don’t play,” Liam says, sounding desperate to his own ears, shaken.

“You’re the one who kissed me,” Harry points out.

“On accident!”

“Seemed like you meant it.”

“I accidentally meant it,” Liam says, and when he realizes what he’s just blurted out he laughs, startled into it by how hopeless he is, how hopeless they both are. Harry laughs along with him, forehead dropping down onto Liam’s shoulder.

Liam’s wings curl forward when he does, wrapping over them both like it’s instinct, fierce love and happiness and the rightness of this all welling up inside Liam at the same time, leaving him feeling like he’s floating again, like he’s back in the sky.

Harry melts under the warmth of Liam’s wings, his arms curling tight around Liam’s waist, pressing out all the air that’d been between them. When he speaks, it’s low and serious, voice muffled into the curve of Liam’s neck. “Please don’t fly away, alright? I reckon I’d like to keep you, if it’s all the same.”

“If I fly anywhere,” Liam promises, meaning it. “I’m definitely taking you with me.”


End file.
